Web Hosting Forum | Lunarpages
News: October 6, 2008 - Submit Your Site for the October 2008 Site of the Month!
 
*
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?
October 12, 2008, 11:36:03 PM


Login with username, password and session length


Pages: 1 [2]   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: Submitting to search engines  (Read 3684 times)
torrie
Spacescooter Operator
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 46


WWW
« Reply #15 on: November 23, 2007, 09:59:03 AM »

Of course the link should have been www.infotorremolinos.com/sitemap.xml
Anyway, I've updated it now to your version, Mitch, since it's probably more reliable than the version I had. It's also included a pdf file that I only added to my site an hour or so ago. How's that for up to the minute assistance?  Happy Happy Joy Joy
Logged

Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.
--Mark Twain

www.infotorremolinos.com
torrie
Spacescooter Operator
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 46


WWW
« Reply #16 on: November 23, 2007, 10:11:53 AM »

Hmmm. That's odd.
Having uploaded your version, Mitch, I clicked on my own link www.infotorremolinos.com/sitemap.xml, and got a message saying "cannot view .xml file using style sheets" (or something similar)
I changed the first couple of lines of code (before the url listings) back to what I had before:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
- <urlset xmlns="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84">

uploaded it again, and this version shows up fine when I click on the link above.

Explain?  Confused
Logged

Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.
--Mark Twain

www.infotorremolinos.com
Mitch
Lunarpages Traffic Cop
Senior Moderator
Berserker Poster
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 7949



WWW
« Reply #17 on: November 23, 2007, 11:37:21 AM »

Try right-clicking this and choose "Save As.." and save it to your PC as sitemap.xml.  Then upload that to your web hosting account.  Sitemap creation is a very tricky thing - one more reason why I use a WordPress plugin that does it for me most of the time on my own projects. Smile
« Last Edit: November 23, 2007, 11:39:03 AM by Mitch » Logged

torrie
Spacescooter Operator
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 46


WWW
« Reply #18 on: November 23, 2007, 01:29:35 PM »

Done. Don't know what went wrong first time. Maybe you do? Doesn't matter, it's working now  Thumbs Up
Logged

Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.
--Mark Twain

www.infotorremolinos.com
torrie
Spacescooter Operator
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 46


WWW
« Reply #19 on: November 28, 2007, 03:33:36 PM »

Well, I've been trawling around for sites to get links from, but it's not that easy. Those that have offered reciprical links are slow to oblige, despite me having added links to them as requested. I think I've followed all the advice (gratefully received) on preparing my site for Search Engines, and I thought I'd produced a worthwhile site with plenty of content etc. I'm pleased with what I've managed, with a bit of help from my friends here, starting from absolutely zero, but somehow all the hard work now feels a bit anti-climatic. If a simple search for "Torremolinos information" isn't going to bring my page up any higher than the 7th or 8th page of Google hits, what was the point?
Am I being impatient? Is there anything else I should be doing? Is this how everyone started out?
I didn't expect to automatically appear at No.1 and start receiving huge paychecks from Google ads. But it is rather disappointing to finally be able to see the fruit of my labour in all it's glory on my computer screen, and to feel such a sense of achievement, only to realise that the real hard work hasn't even begun yet.  Crying or Very sad

Some words of encouragement, anyone?
Logged

Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.
--Mark Twain

www.infotorremolinos.com
Mitch
Lunarpages Traffic Cop
Senior Moderator
Berserker Poster
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 7949



WWW
« Reply #20 on: November 29, 2007, 04:19:43 AM »

Well you might set your goals a little lower at first.  Having worked with Google Adsense on some of my own projects - I can speak from experience.  Right now it isn't going to be much. I would say your first goal is to get enough traffic and interest to where lets say - you can pay for your monthly hosting bill via your Adsense ads. 

I would say your on the right track - just keep up the good work!  Thumbs Up
Logged

torrie
Spacescooter Operator
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 46


WWW
« Reply #21 on: November 29, 2007, 10:29:13 AM »

Thanks as always Mitch for the encouragement. Without it I probably would have thrown the towel in and taken up making model airplanes or something ages ago instead.
Google ads paying for my hosting? To be honest, I hadn't even dared hope for that much initially. The hosting probably costs less than I'd spend on model planes, so if you think of it as a hobby, the cost is unimportant really. And that's all I intended it to be originally - just something to do, to learn something new, to create something myself from scratch.
But since it seems to have worked out reasonably well, it would be a shame for it to be stuck away out of sight. If I had made a particularly nice model, I'd probably want to put it on show on the mantelpiece or somewhere.
I realise of course that I could market my site by advertising it through other (non-internet) media, and possibly the cost of that could be offset by selling advertising on my site to local businesses. But the fact remains, unless I can achieve a decent Google position, nobody is going to take me that seriously, are they?
I guess I'll have to keep working on those links? Not much of a hobby now, is it?  Sad
Logged

Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.
--Mark Twain

www.infotorremolinos.com
torrie
Spacescooter Operator
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 46


WWW
« Reply #22 on: December 14, 2007, 02:23:09 PM »

Another question for Mitch - having made some modifications to my (your!) sitemap, do I need to do anything with the line that looks like this: <lastmod>2007-11-20T18:18:04+00:00</lastmod> ?
It looks to me like this line was automatically generated when you created the site map for me (using WordPress?) but now I don't know if I'm supposed to update it? Sorry  Help

By the way, I changed most of my file names, to include "Torremolinos" as much as possible. For example, instead of /shopping.htm, I now have /torremolinos-shopping.htm. This was suggested to me as one way to try to improve my SEO. What do you think? I've also been advised that my domain name isn't helping matters, and that changing it to, for example, torremolinos-info.com would make a significant difference to how Google rates my site. Any thoughts?
Logged

Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.
--Mark Twain

www.infotorremolinos.com
Mitch
Lunarpages Traffic Cop
Senior Moderator
Berserker Poster
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 7949



WWW
« Reply #23 on: December 17, 2007, 06:30:01 AM »

Yes, you should be able to update it, no problem.  I'd suggest plugging your site into here and let them create the updated version for you:

http://www.xml-sitemaps.com

Then download the new one and upload it to your account.  With the hyphened pages and domains for keywords sake personally I think for addresses it is ok, but I wouldn't change your domain for it.  Personally I don't like hyphenated domains for a user's sake because for example, lets say we are having a conversation on the street - I ask for your domain, and it is alot easier to tell me it is torrierealllyrocks.com rather than torrie-really-rocks.com. 
Logged

torrie
Spacescooter Operator
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 46


WWW
« Reply #24 on: February 24, 2008, 04:10:58 PM »

Just a quick update, for Mitch and anybody else, particularly any newbies who are going the through the same frustrating learning process that I did. It's been a couple of months since I last had a look at my site's performance in Google, and I'm surprised and delighted to report that during that time it's crept up the Google ratings. A simple search for "Torremolinos info" will find my site on the first page of results now, which I'm pretty chuffed about, naturally! I'm now having a renewed burst of enthusiasm for the whole thing, and the message very clearly is - be patient! I've even earned $1.21 from Google ads! Razz
Logged

Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.
--Mark Twain

www.infotorremolinos.com
Mitch
Lunarpages Traffic Cop
Senior Moderator
Berserker Poster
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 7949



WWW
« Reply #25 on: February 25, 2008, 06:42:40 AM »

Awesome!   Thumbs Up

While doing some freeware reviews, I was reminded of this thread and thought I would pass you along this program:

http://blog.lunarpages.com/2008/02/22/gsitemap-google-sitemap-creator/

Should do a good job at crawling your site and creating the Google Site Map for you. Smile
Logged

Pages: 1 [2]   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by MySQL Powered by PHP Powered by SMF 1.1.6 | SMF © 2006-2008, Simple Machines LLC

Valid XHTML 1.0! Valid CSS! Dilber MC Theme by HarzeM